Messaging app Squad could inspire digital hangout copycats

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A mobile messaging app called Squad could encourage a new wave of digital "hangout" apps or features, according to TechCrunch. Launched last week, Squad is a video messaging app that allows users to video chat with up to six people and simultaneously share their screen with friends.

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For instance, users, while videochatting, can enlist a friend to co-draft a tweet, or a group of friends could scroll through an entertaining Instagram feed together.

Gen Z is the target market for digital hangout experiences. Young people are increasingly using digital spaces as havens not just to communicate, but to commune.

Squad, and messaging apps like it, are positioned as digital hangouts, looking to take on the role of a so-called "third place," meaning a digital space where people congregate outside of home or work/school. For example, the massively popular online game "Fortnite" is a "third place" for many US teens and millennials.

While third places used to be physical spaces, like coffee shops or malls, they, like many other physical things, have digitized. Young, digitally native people, are comfortable not only sharing their lives via devices, but immersing themselves in digital realities to engage with others. New experiences built for new technologies will increasingly facilitate the digital-physical convergence that has emerged among younger generations.

We predict that more existing or emerging apps will integrate immersive messaging, screensharing, or other digital hangout features. Engineers elsewhere will be hot on Squad's trail. Facebook — known for aggressively poaching features from competitors — is likely already looking to copy the feature across its own platforms.

For its part, Apple is examining how it can beef up messaging, and CEO Tim Cook has previously hyped the possibilities of AR to change how people interact, both with others and with physical space. Houseparty — the group video chat app that's also used as a virtual hangout among many young people — is integrating a popular mobile game called "Heads Up" that will let app users play with friends in-app.

Further, as the backend tech required to implement certain immersive and interactive features matures, such features are likely to become more commonplace across digital venues. For example, Squad used Apple's ReplayKit to enable screensharing, which only last June became stable enough to be built into a consumer app.

Digital "hangout" features will aim to drive the next wave of engagement growth. Immersive digital experiences are likely to be highly engaging and potentially addictive, in part because the interactions that happen there are experienced as extensions of — or augmentations to — real life.

Users of hangout apps are likely to have extended session lengths, and have admitted to engaging so thoroughly that they ditch reality. For example, a third (32.5%) of "Fortnite" players play 6-10 hours a week, and 35.1% of players in high school or college said they've missed either some or a lot of school in order to play the game, per LendEDU/Pollfish.